The former Minister of Defense of Ukraine has again strengthened his position in Sevastopol
Sevastopol was “blown up” by a photograph in which Acting Governor Dmitry Ovsyannikov was captured together with the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine, and now Russian businessman Pavel Lebedev, on the sidelines of the Yalta International Economic Forum.
Even in Ukrainian times, Lebedev was criticized by opponents in the media for building up the city center with glass high-rises and cutting down relict forests on the southern coast of Crimea for new construction sites.
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Dmitry Ovsyannikov, who was appointed acting 8 months ago, initially took an aggressive position towards the businessman and promised to return 1400 hectares of vineyards transferred by a court decision to the use of Artvin JSC to city ownership. This enterprise belonged to the Yanukovych family until 2014, but after reunification with Russia it was re-registered to Lebedev.
The fate of the government’s claim against Artvin is unknown, however, judging by the fact that Lebedev’s enterprise has already begun to lay claim to other urban agricultural assets, they are confident in their position.
Meanwhile, the facts of the government of Sevastopol legitimizing Lebedev’s most scandalous construction projects became known to local media. For example, it turned out that at the end of last year changes were made to the cadastral map, according to which a site was removed from the forest fund on the southern coast of Crimea where, on the site of a juniper grove, the oligarch’s company built two multi-storey buildings for apartments. According to rumors, this is only the first stage of construction in the Laspi tract.
In addition, it became known that the court ordered the government to allocate 14 hectares on Cape Fiolent to Lebedev’s companies also for the construction of apartments. It is still unknown whether the city authorities are going to challenge this decision, which has caused protests from social activists.
But the city website “Forpost” reported that the government department of architecture is issuing permits for an entire block of apartments built by Lebedev’s company “Parangon” on the seashore in Cossack Bay.
Thus, the scandalous photograph became only a visual symbol of the next strengthening of the businessman’s position.
It is worth noting here that Ovsyannikov’s predecessor as governor, Sergei Menyailo, also initially demonstratively distanced himself from Lebedev and even ordered the return of his charitable contributions to children’s institutions to the businessman.
However, a year later, Menyailo said that he wanted to give Lebedev “a chance to improve.” After this, the businessman erected a memorial to war heroes on the territory of Victory Park, which under Ukraine was allocated to him for parking. This, apparently, was taken as a correction, and the government began to conclude investment contracts for construction with Lebedev’s companies.
Ovsyannikov’s behavior has a serious difference from the behavior of Menyailo, who began to be friends with Lebedev only after he publicly quarreled with the leader of Sevastopol public opinion, businessman and media tycoon Alexei Chaly. Ovsyannikov, throughout the 8 months of his tenure, demonstrated simply amazing loyalty to Chalom and support for his projects.
For this, he received unequivocal support from Chaly, the influential media in Sevastopol.
However, now he has been hit with a barrage of criticism. And Ovsyannikov has nothing to compensate for his reputational losses on the eve of the gubernatorial elections. The new team never acquired its own media resource.
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